4 comments:

I just use the women's like everyone else :). This is probably the bar where I've seen the most rampant cross-gender bathroom usage that I can remember. There are only two toilets for the whole bar, after all.

On one occasion I went back to find the men's door locked, so I walk over the women's and try it, and it is locked too. Just then, a girl walks out, I look at her with a grin, and start to enter after her. Before I could, though, her female friend walks out of the GUY'S bathroom, so I just used that one. We all had a good laugh.

This post actually reminded me of a section of W. H. Mayall's "Principles in Design" (found by way of Donald A. Norman's "The Design of Everyday Things").

The passage described building materials for bus/train stop shelters. Glass panes were being broken by vandals as fast as they could be replaced, so they switched to plywood panels. The breaking basically stopped, despite the fact that it would not take much more force to break the plywood panels. So the author concluded that perhaps there was some kind of "psychology of materials" that changed the vandals desires to break the shelter walls.

Maybe this concept could be applied to bathroom walls. Maybe some kind of heavily textured/studded wall that would be nearly impossible to actually write on. Of course, it would probably end up being kind of ugly (uglier than a vandalised wall, though?). To me, putting chalkboards up in bathrooms just says "Come on, I dare you," hence the paint.

Personally I've always wanted to see a bar with dry erase boards covering the entire bathroom wall. It would still attract the same permanent ink and paint, though, and putting on a fresh coat of paint is probably cheaper than replacing dry erase boards :(.